Ceilings in London theatres keep falling down

Earlier this month, theatregoers watching “Death of a Salesman” in the grand circle of London’s Piccadilly Theatre had a shock.

As soon as the play started Nov. 6, “a dripping sound” could be heard, said Lucy Cartwright, 32, an occupational therapist who was in the audience that night with her boyfriend.

“It was getting louder and more frequent,” she recalled, on a return visit to the theatre last week. When she looked up, about 20 minutes in, she saw a foot-long crack had appeared in the ceiling. And it was getting bigger.

“About 30 seconds later, the whole thing just went, ‘Phwom!’ ” Cartwright said, mimicking the sound of a slab of plasterboard crashing down.

Five people were lightly injured in the incident, which left a hole in the ceiling. Ushers quickly evacuated the theatre, and American actor Wendell Pierce, the play’s star, went outside to check on everyone. “Turn to your loved ones and friends, left and right, and say, ‘Which pub are we going to?’ ” he said. “Let’s go there and have a memorable night in anticipation of coming back.”

The plasterboard fell as a result of a “localised water leak,” the Ambassadors Theatre Group, the building’s owners, said in a statement. A spokeswoman declined to answer questions about how it happened but said that an investigation was ongoing and noted that the building, originally opened in 1928, was undergoing a multimillion-pound refurbishment.

The theatre reopened Nov 15 with the ceiling repaired, and producers and theatre owners in the West End quickly moved on, calling what had happened an unfortunate accident that could befall any building in Britain, especially one so old.

But this was not the first chunk of ceiling to fall in a London theatre, leading some observers to ask if theatregoers should keep an eye on the ceiling as much as on the stage.

In 2004, 15 people were injured at the Theatre Royal Haymarket during a performance of “When Harry Met Sally” after a chandelier fell from the ceiling. A safety rope meant it only dropped 4 feet, but it brought down parts of the ceiling.

Luke Perry, the “Beverly Hills 90210” star, “leapt from the stage to help people,” The Daily Telegraph reported.

In December 2013, almost 90 people were injured at the Apollo Theatre when part of the ceiling collapsed during “The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Nighttime.” That was caused by wear to fabric strips that help keep the theatre’s ornate plasterwork in place.

The day afterward, the Society of London Theatre said in a statement that “every theatre undergoes rigorous safety checks” but the event so shocked London it led to a new safety regime. West End theatres ceilings are now inspected and certified annually.

Yet for some in the industry, these measures were not enough. “More needs to be done to maintain these buildings,” said Mark Shenton, a freelance theatre critic, in a telephone interview. “Water leaks can happen all the time, so if that’s a real risk, we’re all going to the theatre at our peril,” he added.

“We are sitting on a time bomb,” Richard Howle, a former commercial director for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s London theatres, wrote in The Stage, a British theatre newspaper. Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh, another theatre impresario, have spent huge sums refurbishing buildings for the love of them, Howle added. “But when they are no longer around, who will be prepared to plow millions into our historic theatres without the prospect of a commercial return?”

In New York, theatre ceiling collapses are unheard of. “I don’t believe anything similar has ever happened on Broadway,” said Jennifer Tepper, a producer and author of books on Broadway history, in an email.

In London, similar problems have been reported in smaller theatres outside the West End. The Southwark Playhouse in South London stopped several performances of a musical, “Preludes,” this fall after water dripped onto the audience. Chris Smyrnios, the theatre’s artistic director, said in an email that the theatre was in a former office building, built in the 1960s, whose roof “has obviously seen better days.”

The theatre had resealed the roof to ensure the leaks shouldn’t happen again, Smyrnios said, adding that the Southwark Playhouse will relocate to a new venue in three years.

Many theatres charge a restoration surcharge on each ticket bought, of about $2, to help pay for maintenance. Yet some theatres spend far more than this levy could ever raise. One recent morning, Cameron Mackintosh — the producer of “Les Miserables,” who owns seven West End theatres — stood in the rafters of his Gielgud Theatre, which dates from 1906, and pointed at its newly restored ceiling. It had cost around $1 million, he said, or $2 million if you factored in lost revenue from closing the theatre.

Mackintosh, 73, said the job had included securing many pieces of elaborate plaster decoration in place with wire. He commissioned the work in January, after receiving a report from engineers that read “‘Don’t panic, but we reckon within two years you do all the ceilings of your Edwardian theatres,’ ” he said.

In 2017, Mackintosh also spent around $77 million refurbishing the Victoria Palace Theatre, where “Hamilton” is playing, which included work on its ceiling.

Just before “Hamilton” opened for previews, water seeped into the plasterwork of that theatre’s auditorium. “I suddenly saw all my beautiful gold new paint turn virulent green,” Mackintosh said.

“It is a nightmare with water,” he added, saying you had to be ready to deal with any problem that might occur. The Piccadilly Theatre incident “may be a very good wakening call to realise the large amounts of money that need to go back to keep these 100-year-old buildings in condition,” he added.

In the grand circle of the Piccadilly Theatre during a recent performance of “Death of a Salesman,” no one seemed worried about the repaired ceiling. Keijo Nieminen, 31, a construction engineer from Finland, said he wasn’t concerned. “In Finland, we’ve had some similar issues,” he said. Sometimes roofs there collapse there because of heavy snowfall. “I trust British engineers,” he added.

Anne-Lorraine Imbert, 28, an investment manager, sat in row J — directly below where the plasterboard had fallen. She wasn’t concerned either, she said. “It’s much less dangerous than traveling on the tube, cycling, anything,” she said.

In any case, perishing in an ornate theatre would be “so much more joyful” than dying elsewhere, she said.

Several audience members had actually been in the audience on the night of the collapse and had been given free tickets so they could finish watching the show. Cartwright, the occupational therapist, was one of them, there again with her boyfriend. “We’re braving it,” she said, with a laugh.

At several points during the play, Cartwright pulled her boyfriend, Adam Edwards, close, as if for protection. Afterward, she laughed when asked if in those moments she had been worried about the ceiling.

“It wasn’t a ‘brace, brace’ move, no,” she said. She had just been overwhelmed by the play.

© 2019 New York Times News Service